| 70 |
Los Angeles Times
Although not for the faint of heart, it's a potent -- and very tricky -- treat.
|
| 63 |
Baltimore Sun
Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan
As scary Halloween movies go, Thirteen Ghosts' "Oh, please" factor is pretty darn high.
|
| 60 |
Mr. Showbiz
This might be as perfect a new-millennium Halloween creepshow as we can expect.
|
| 50 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Carla Meyer
Oddly comforting in its inconsistent acting and bad monster makeup.
|
| 50 |
Chicago Tribune
It's an event film, all about flash and spectacle, even though the movie itself is void of any real substance.
|
| 50 |
USA Today
Too distinctive-looking to dismiss out of hand, but it would help to be able to look through a magic viewfinder (or maybe magic eraser) and make its script disappear.
|
| 50 |
Boston Globe
Jonathan Perry
A formulaic script, a tired plot -- and uninspired dialogue all point up the real star. It's the house,
|
| 50 |
TV Guide
This efficient but soulless funhouse ride eschews suspense in favor of frantic scrambling from disturbing specters, like the naked female ghost who lurks around bloody bathtubs.
|
| 50 |
Variety
The actors manage to keep from being upstaged by the sets, though just barely. Abraham goes over the top, then further still.
|
| 42 |
Entertainment Weekly
Staff (Not Credited)
The result is a Halloween movie in horror limbo.
|
| 38 |
New York Daily News
If only half as much attention had been paid to story and character as to set design, the cast wouldn't be playing second banana to a gut rehab.
|
| 38 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
13 Ghosts is the type of project that all parties concerned will have to live down for the rest of their lives.
|
| 38 |
New York Post
What follows is very gruesome indeed, though the footage of people being chased by hideous ghosts soon becomes rather dull.
|
| 30 |
New Times (L.A.)
This bloody stab at William Castle's 1960 gimmick flick substitutes chaos for chills.
|
| 30 |
Film Threat
This film is a messy jumble.
|
| 25 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
First-time director Steve Beck hurls a dozen ghosts and probably a million dollars' worth of prosthetic makeup at us for a full 90 minutes, but it's old hat and not a bit scary.
|
| 25 |
Chicago Sun-Times
The physical look of the picture is splendid. The screenplay is dead on arrival. The noise level is torture.
|
| 25 |
Christian Science Monitor
The movie's one good performance is given by the house, full of ominous inscriptions, inscrutable chambers, and fiendish machines. The human characters are played with various degrees of manic overacting.
|
| 25 |
Miami Herald
The set design of Thirteen Ghosts may have been expensive, but its thrills are cheap.
|
| 20 |
Washington Post
Tries to combine humor with ghostly horror but excels at neither.
|
| 20 |
Chicago Reader
Offers so much frenetic fast cutting to so little purpose that it becomes an ordeal.
|
| 20 |
The New York Times
All it has in common with the original is a few dumb fun scares. In the new version, what we're left with after the scares is just plain dumb.
|
| 20 |
LA Weekly
A brutish affair replete with sliced bodies, a diced storyline and enough clanky dialogue to wake the dead.
|
| 20 |
Austin Chronicle
Sad, sorry remake.
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